O.C. home decor hub is broadening the base

Oct. 9, 2012

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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Rolling Greens at South Coast Collection in Costa Mesa features a unique shopping experiece, a wide variety of one-of-a-kind objects, unique gifts and garden accessories including a living wall and a green house. ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Rolling Greens at South Coast Collection in Costa Mesa features a unique shopping experiece, a wide variety of one-of-a-kind objects, unique gifts and garden accessories including a living wall and a green house. ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Rolling Greens at South Coast Collection in Costa Mesa features garden accessories including a living wall and a green house. ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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jars of jams are among the gift items at Rolling Greens at South Coast Collection in Costa Mesa. ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Many of the furniture and home decor items at Rolling Greens at South Coast Collection in Costa Mesa are one-of-a-kind objects. ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Rolling Greens at South Coast Collection in Costa Mesa features furniture and garden accessories, as well as cookbooks and other items for the home. ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Some of the gift items at Rolling Greens at South Coast Collection in Costa Mesa include candles and soaps. ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Many of the furniture and home decor items at Rolling Greens at South Coast Collection in Costa Mesa are one-of-a-kind objects. ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Rolling Greens at South Coast Collection in Costa Mesa features a unique shopping experiece, a wide variety of one-of-a-kind objects, unique gifts and garden accessories including a living wall and a green house.ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Like a homeowner installing an important piece of designer furniture in a residence, South Coast Collection, or SOCO, is about to add heft to its home and entertainment roster. And in doing so, it's becoming a focal point of a local retail trend: showrooms that do double duty.

Design Within Reach, the Stamford, Conn.-based purveyor of modern furniture and décor, will launch a 20,000-square-foot showroom in November at the Costa Mesa shopping and restaurant center developed at 3303 Hyland Ave. by Newport Beach-based Burnham USA.

This will be the West Coast flagship for Design Within Reach and will be exclusive in Orange County to SOCO.

Surfas Culinary District – the partnership between Surfas Los Angeles, a well-known restaurant-supply store frequented by chefs, restaurateurs, cooks and foodies, and Culinary District in Hot Springs National Park, Ark. – will debut a 25,000-square-foot showroom at the center this month.

The two retailers and Rolling Greens, a Culver City-based nursery and décor store that recently opened its O.C. doors at SOCO, all have years of experience in what is, for other retailers, an emerging trend of putting out the welcome mat not just to the trade, but also to the public.

Design Within Reach, which closed its outpost at Fashion Island a few years ago, always has been primarily a modern-furnishings retailer with a prominent to-the-trade program. Surfas Los Angeles began providing food-service supplies to businesses in 1937 but opened its doors to consumers in the mid-'90s.

Greg Salmeri, owner of Rolling Greens and a Laguna Beach resident, said the idea of selling to consumers started 11 years ago, after the 9/11 attacks, in attempt to boost what once was a wholesale business.

It's a concept that several upscale home-furnishings and décor showrooms in SOCO, including Wildflower Linens and Robert Westley Designs have embraced as their business sector emerges from being knocked down by the economic recession.

Scalamandre, which specializes in wall coverings and other interior design elements, and Stark Carpet & Home shuttered their to-the-trade locations at Laguna Design Center in Laguna Niguel in 2010 and have since moved to SOCO with showrooms that welcome consumers.

It all boils down to one reason: adapting to survive.

From 2007 to 2012, weak demand conditions, especially poor consumer sentiment, combined with weak housing sales caused U.S. home-furnishings industry revenue to drop by 8.9 percent in 2008 and by 13 percent in 2009, according to Eben Jose, an analyst at IBISWorld, a company that specializes in industry research.

But there are signs of recovery. U.S. home-furnishings industry revenue is projected to grow 6.1 percent to $28.5 billion from 2011 to 2012, according to Jose.

Looking ahead – from 2012 to 2017 – Jose forecast 3.4 percent annualized growth in industry revenue. This will be fueled by demand from consumers who have held back from buying over the past several years, he said.

While those customers might have shopped for cheap chic furnishings at stores such as Target, they're not going to buy "run-of-the-mill furniture," Jose said. "They're going back to wanting something nice and something worth more and will be willing to spend for it."

And that's where these upscale showroom/store hybrids come into the picture.

There's been a lot of sameness in furniture stores throughout the U.S., said Jerry Epperson, managing director of Mann, Armistead & Epperson Ltd.

"You've got up to five different stores with virtually identical merchandise," he said. "It's very frustrating for shoppers."

What the retail/wholesale hybrids may offer is the kind of customization and better selection that once was available only to clients of interior designers and decorators.

Equally important, Epperson said, is that the furniture and décor stores need to be located near each other, regardless of whether they have the same types of customers.

"The most successful thing for furniture and décor stores is to have several of them in a row," Epperson said, "because shoppers who are going to one will go to see the others to see if there's something a little better."

That's certainly part of the plan of SOCO's owners. Whether shoppers are going to open their wallets and respond to all that's been put in place for them is what many in the industry are waiting to see.

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